I first mentioned the Australian news to you in my post about what happens when there isn’t any news. Since then I’ve really quite got into the Australian news. It can be pretty entertaining; the news may now even be my favourite program.

These news items all happened over the last 7 days. No kidding! First up, you’ve got to laugh when, as happened the other night, one of the brief headlines to introduce the news was……

DONG!

“South East Queensland had its hottest January day for two years!”

Well, isn’t that something! So it wasn’t this hot in January last year, but it was the year before. That really is news isn’t it?

Hmmmm. Must be another day when nothing happened.

But how can you turn a really hot day into a proper news item? Here’s how. You send a reporter into King George Square, Brisbane City Centre, to see if he can fry an egg on the pavement. Unfortunately, despite the floor reaching temperatures of around 55°C, the egg remained too runny to put into bread.

The council are considering ways to make the square cooler. I have a suggestion. The square has just been revamped at a cost of $28 million and 15 new trees have been planted, twice as many as were there before.

Perhaps they should just wait for them to grow?

Some more “main news stories” of the week. And I can assure you, I am not making this up.

DONG!

“In Keperra, (North West suburb of Brisbane) dog nappers got away with a nine week old puppy. Two men and a woman entered Pet Works at 2:30 PM this afternoon and stole the white Pomeranian puppy worth $1000 from an open cage”.

Main news?

That day, 7 News were at the scene. They interviewed the shop worker who said “it’s difficult to know where the puppy has gone and whether they are the appropriate people for that pet”.

Appropriate people for that pet? I wouldn’t have thought so.

DONG!

“A koala and her baby have been shot three times with an air rifle at Morayfield (town just north of Brisbane). The eight month old Joey was wounded in the chest and stomach and his mother was hit in the leg”.

That day, 7 News were at the scene. They interviewed the guy who’s garden the animals fell into. “It’s disgusting, we’re just trying to figure out going back if we heard any strange noises in the last week or so when it could have happened”.

The animals were sedated and taken to the Australian Wildlife Hospital. Police are still hunting for the shooter.

Very sad, of course. But is it main news? It is here. And the next day!

DONG!

“Doug, (he has a name now) the baby koala, is stable but still fighting for life”.

The cat in a tree story.

Back in England, we would often have that “cat stuck in a tree” story, which would be the happy ending story that would happily end the news. That story when the newsreader says “and finally, in Bishops Stortford today a cat got stuck in a tree” before ending with pictures of Tilly the cat being cuddled by a cute little girl standing next to a big burly firemen.

AAAHHH!

Here in Australia, I think I saw my first “cat stuck in a tree” story the other day.

Late night CCTV footage over at a shopping centre in Ipswich had picked up an eastern brown snake of about 1 1/2 m in length poking around outside one of the shops. Suddenly, the snake had found a way in and disappeared into the store.

That day, 7 News were at the scene. They interviewed one surprisingly happy but nervous lady shop owner who said “My biggest fear in life is snakes”. The snake catcher had already visited and had no luck in finding this killer snake.

Back in the newsroom, smiley faces all round.

Life in Australia, it does make you laugh.

You can check out a video of the snake breaking in and read the story yourself over at the Queensland Times.

As Nick Ross used to say, “Don’t have nightmares, do sleep well”. I think I will actually.

Must admit on our visit over to Brisbane last November some of the news storys were very trivial and amusing, but not half as funny as the TV adverts you have, my son and I just tuned in for the ad’s. Also Ryan, monty and wippa on the radio kept us amused.

I'm BobinOz and I moved to Australia in November 2007 after living in England for a very long time. Why did I move and what's it like here? All this and more answered right here at Bobinoz. Click here to read more on my about me page.